Association or Consolidation is a highly important feature of memory processing. It is the ‘transferring’ of information/experience from short-term to long-term memory. We are inevitably obtaining information day in and day out; this information directly goes to short-term memory. It is undesirable and impossible to store all the details surrounding us, permanently. There are, however, some experiences or information we do acquire, store and save during our everyday life, deliberately or otherwise. For this, our brain demands the transmission of an experience, event or knowledge from short-term memory to long-term memory which is done through association or consolidation. It is synergizing new information or experience with previously acquired information or experience. For example association of
The information is consolidated, more easily, when a person is attentive and alert, inferring the significance of “concentration” and “focus”. Emotional association – such as through pain, joy, pleasure or fear – also tends to solidify memory traces (Mayda, 2010). It is normally understood the memory can associate particular smell, place or music with a certain occurrence, as well.
If consolidation of present experience is made with past information for safekeeping, then it is surely possible, our existing information might be associated with a future event. The readers may amuse themselves with an interesting argument, “episodic memory (personal memory or experience) supports ‘mental time travel’ into the future as well as the past, and indeed, numerous recent studies have provided evidence that episodic memory contributes importantly to imagining or simulati